Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” has served as Donald Trump’s go-to theme song for the last several years, to the point where the president-elect even has his own choreographed dance to accompany it. In a new Facebook post, Village People founding member and songwriter Victor Willis defended Trump’s use of the song while also firmly denying any gay connotations that you may come come to associate with the anthem over the years.
Willis said he initially asked Trump to cease playing “Y.M.C.A.” at his events as the the complaints he received from fans became a “nuisance to me.” However, “the Trump campaign knew they had obtained a political use license from BMI and absent that license being terminated, they had every right to continue using ‘Y.M.C.A.’ And they did.”
Besides, Willis explained, Trump “seems to genuinely like ‘Y.M.C.A.’ and he’s having a lot of fun with it,” and “I simply didn’t have the heart to prevent his continued use of my song in the face of so many artists withdrawing his use of their material. So I told my wife to inform BMI to not withdraw the Trump campaign political use license.”
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Willis also acknowledged the financial benefit, noting that he stands to make “several million dollars” due to Trump’s continued use of the song.
As for the idea that “Y.M.C.A. is “somehow a gay anthem,” Willis said that “is a false assumption based on the fact that my writing partner was gay, and some (not all) of Village People were gay, and that the first Village People album was totally about gay life.”
Willis continued:
“This assumption is also based on the fact that the YMCA was apparently being used as some sort of gay hangout and since one of the writers was gay and some of the Village People are gay, the song must be a message to gay people. To that I say once again, get your minds out of the gutter. It is not.
Sadly, when the President Elect started using the song, people attempting to brand the song as a gay anthem reached a fever pitch as many used it to say, oh, Trump don’t know the song is a gay anthem? This was done in a manner to attempt to shame the President Elect’s use of the song.
As I stated on numerous occasions, I knew nothing about the Y being a hang out for gays when I wrote the lyrics to ‘Y.M.C.A.’ and Jacques Morali (who was gay) never once stated such to me. In fact, Jacques never once told me how to write my lyrics otherwise I would have said to him, you don’t need me, why don’t you simply write the lyrics.
I therefore wrote ‘Y.M.C.A.’ about the things I knew about the Y in the urban areas of San Francisco such as swimming, basketball, track, and cheap food and cheap rooms. And when I say, “hang out with all the boys” that is simply 1970s black slang for black guys hanging-out together for sports, gambling or whatever. There’s nothing gay about that.
So, to the extent that ‘Y.M.C.A.’ is considered a gay anthem based on the fact that gays once used certain YMCA’s for elicit activity, the assumption that the song alludes to that is completely misguided.
Therefore, since I wrote the lyrics and ought to know what the lyrics I wrote is really about, come January 2025, my wife will start suing each and every news organization that falsely refers to ‘Y.M.C.A.’, either in their headlines or alluded to in the base of the story, that ‘Y.M.C.A.’ is somehow a gay anthem because such notion is based solely on the song’s lyrics alluding to elicit activity for which it does not. However, I don’t mind that gays think of the song as their anthem.
But you’d be hard-pressed to find ‘Y.M.C.A.’ on the play list at any gay club, parade or other gay activity in a way that would suggest it’s somehow an anthem to the community other than alluding to illicit activity, which is defamatory, and damaging to the song. But it stops in 2025.
However, you know where you-will find ‘Y.M.C.A.’? On the play list of almost every wedding, bar mitzvah, sporting organization, and the song is used in commercials and motion pictures and products worldwide.
The true anthem is ‘Y.M.C.A.’s appeal to people of all strips including President Elect Trump. But the song is not really a gay anthem other than certain people falsely suggesting that it is. And this must stop because it is damaging to the song.”
